The crews responsible for fashioning sets, clambering up ladders to dangle spotlights from the ceiling and sew together costumes often receive less attention than their peers onstage.
But making the technical preparations necessary for any Dartmouth production requires months, sometimes even a year, of concerted efforts from student crews and Dartmouth professors.
Magic Sheets: "Making the Verbal Visual"
Thater professor Dan Kotlowitz's work designing lighting for theatrical productions at Dartmouth has sent him into hospitals, prisons and a coal mine.
"I did rounds with a medical student when I did a show about AIDS," he said, recalling his hospital visit. "It didn't give me specific ideas, but it gave me a feel for the place."
Kotlowitz originally aspired to become a painter, but he found that "my eyes couldn't do what my hands told them to do." During high school and college, he discovered light, a medium in which he could express his ideas more readily than with paint.
He now frequently draws on this background in the visual arts when seeking inspiration for a show. He is often in Sherman Art Library and frequents several New York bookstores when not in Hanover.
This research process typically starts six to 12 months before the beginning of a show.
Once Kotlowitz has completed this brainstorming phase, he sketches out a diagram called a "magic sheet" of how all the lights will be arranged onstage. The magic sheet also uses arrows to show where all of the lights will be pointed and focused.
Kotlowitz and a team of students typically spend about two to two and a half weeks hanging and adjusting lights. There are about 400 lights available for use in in Moore Theater, plus 300 dimmers.
Anna Karenina, Dartmouth's most recent mainstage show, featured 200 to 300 light changes, or a change in lighting approximately every 20 to 30 seconds.
"The usual is about 100 to 200 cues, so this is certainly a lot for Dartmouth, but the show demanded it," Kotlowitz said, citing the stark simplicity of a set that contained only eight chairs and four panels.
Still, this simplicity of set and the use of only two colors of light created a challenge Kotlowitz relished. "Everything was angle, intensity, composition."
Despite the technical nature of Kotlowitz's work, he sees the theater classes that he teaches to as squarely within the liberal arts tradition. "I want students to see the world in a broader sense--we look at light constantly, yet we don't perceive it," he said.
Lewis Crickard, the current Hopkins Center director, described this undertaking particularly well, Kotlowitz said. "It's about making the verbal visual," he remembered.
Scenery: "This Is What I Want: A Giant Mushroom"
"It's my job to say, 'I want a giant mushroom,' and it's Scott [Silver's] job to figure out how to afford it, and Carl [Choquette's] job to figure out to build it," Dave Soule '03 said, explaining his job as a set designer.
The process of preparing for a show begins with mounting a small-scale model of the stage and how it ought to look.
Soule pointed to a model he made for the set of Liv Rooth's one-woman show. It features four gray shutters of varying height lined up in the background and several transparent pieces of paper, which represent what Soule called "squashed things."
Each of the four "squashed things" consists of several crushed objects applied to a piece of glass, objects which symbolize the different tone of each of the four sections of the play. Soule has recently finished one containing torn nylons and cigarette butts.
"The squashed things make the set uncomfortable," he said, explaining that the jagged glass contrasts sharply with the even, vertical rhythm created by the shutters and platforms on the stage.
Most sets, however, are made of wood, the workshop's "material of choice," Soule said, although the workshop does have the capacity to weld and shape metal.
The trap room, accessible from either the trapdoors onstage or a series of winding backstage staircases, contains a variety of stock set equipment, including a dentist's chair, a garden hose, and stacks of stock wooden squares that can easily be made into platforms or tables.
The stage of the Moore Theater is designed to accommodate diverse sets. For Anna Karenina, the floor of the stage was kept level with the floor of the theater, allowing the insertion of several extra rows of seats.
During other productions, including the musical "Into the Woods" during Spring 2001, the floor has been lowered 20 or 30 feet to create an orchestra pit, or raised to create a few extra feet of stage space.
Both Soule and master carpenter Carl Choquette described the hands-on nature of set design.
When teaching work-study students, Choquette emphasizes how practical learning the basics of carpentry or writing can be to students later on their lives. "These skills will help them fix their houses later," he said.
Renaissance Jackets and Walls of Shoes
When theater professor Margaret Spicer was a teenager, she wanted to design store windows. "I've come full circle now," she said, reflecting on the career path that has brought her to designing costumes and integrating costume design with other aspects of set design.
Spicer's office is stocked with a wall's worth of books on fashion, period costumes and art history, which she turns to for inspiration. Looking at 19th century Russian photographs particularly helped her come up with ideas for costumes for Anna Karenina.
Combing through Dartmouth's storage facilities has also aided Spicer with costume design. Altered costumes from storage are generally used for minor characters in most productions; in Anna Karenina, only the three most important female characters wore costumes made from scratch.
Two large rooms in the basement house all of Dartmouth's costumes collection. The more readily accessible holds racks of modern men's clothing, arranged by size, while others hold an array of clothing belonging to both genders, arranged by period for easy browsing.
By contrast, less frequently used items "like armor" are tucked at the top of a narrow staircase, Spicer said.
Spicer often lovingly strokes a favorite garment or two when passing through the facility, noting, for example, the fine seams on a purple silk man's Renaissance jacket.
Aesthetic and symbolic considerations also influence Spicer's designs. For example, Anna Karenina always appeared onstage dressed in bright red, which both allowed her to stand out against the other characters' black costumes and symbolized her grand passion.
Also, designs must be practical: Spicer plots charts showing how many costume changes each actor needs to make during the course of a show.
Typically, basic costume designs for the once-a-term mainstage production must be ready by the first day of the term. Four to five days of quiet ensue, as directors hold auditions. As soon as a definite cast list has been posted, the costume shop's staffers go to work making adjustments and measurements.
During the show, Spicer and staff must maintain costumes. There are several sets of washing machines located near the costume shop for the purpose. And then, after the show goes down, the costumes must be sorted, cleaned and returned to storage.
While Spicer originally studied fashion design in college, she said she is glad she chose her current work. "The reason why fashion was limiting for me is that I would be working with just contemporary clothing," she said. "Each production here is different and new, even plays I've done many times."
Period plays like Anna Karenina are especially "pleasures," she said.
